


What We Pretend We Are

by Dredfulhapiness



Category: Spider-Man (Comicverse), Spider-Man - All Media Types
Genre: Because Harry, F/M, Gwen Stacy's life, MJ learns to skateboard, Most of this is a metaphor for death, Substance Abuse, This is about love because everything's about love, animal death but it's symbolic and not violent
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-05
Updated: 2020-11-06
Packaged: 2021-03-09 01:47:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,096
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27406795
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dredfulhapiness/pseuds/Dredfulhapiness
Summary: Two hours into move-in day, Gwen is pounding on Harry’s door.It’s Halloween themed, seemingly. Harry’s name is written on a pumpkin made out of construction paper. She knocks three times, then knocks three times more, and she’s raising her fist to knock again when the door opens.“Coffee?” She asks, before Harry can even open his mouth. He pushes the door the rest of the way open with his foot. She steps in to the half-unpacked dorm room.“You’re addicted,” He tells her. “Peter, this is Gwen. Gwen, this is Peter.”The first thing Gwen noticed about Peter is how firm his handshake is. It’s something her father always lauded— a good, firm handshake.“It’s nice to meet you, Peter,” Gwen says. “Want to get coffee?”Or, Gwen loses faith
Relationships: Harry Osborn & Gwen Stacy, Harry Osborn & Peter Parker & Gwen Stacy & Mary Jane Watson, Peter Parker/Gwen Stacy
Comments: 19
Kudos: 26





	What We Pretend We Are

Gwen Stacy is born into beauty and good graces. If her childhood is weather, it’s blue skies to the horizon. If her disposition is a plant, it’s ivy, a constant trek upwards. If her elementary experience is summed up in school supplies, it’s triangular highlighters and pencils that smell like cotton candy.

Gwen Stacy is an envy.

By the first day of kindergarten, she already knows how to write her name and a handful of other basic words. She comes home with a folder full of gold stars. It’s hung up on the fridge beside Christmas cards, and scribbles, and reminders for doctor’s appointments.

She spends nap time hunched in the sliver of light that comes through a crack in the blinds and tries to make sense of picture books she hasn’t read before.

Her report card says she’s smart and sociable. She picks up basic math like she’s always known it. She makes friends with a wave and a smile. She asks, and children split their lunch, no questions asked.

—

Gwen sits on the counter while her mom cooks. The air smells like pork chops. Helen chops potatoes with the deftness of a chef.

“When’s dad coming home?” Gwen asks, eyes tracking the short arc of the knife.

“Late,” Helen says, offhand. “He’s got a lot of work to do.”

It’s not unusual, Gwen eventually learns, for George to come home well after Gwen’s gone to bed. She wakes, sometimes, late into the night to hear him moving around the kitchen. The microwave humming lulls her back to sleep.

—

In first grade they learn about the solar system and it consumes her. Gwen goes home and draws a diagram onto an entire ream of papers until she can recite it forward and backward.

_My Very Elegant Mother Just Served Us Nine Pizzas_

_Mercury Venus Earth Mars Jupiter Saturn Uranus Neptune Pluto._

She incorporates the asteroid belt halfway through the stack of papers, scribbles it in between Mars and Jupiter.

—

Gwen sneaks down the hallway, careful to avoid the floorboards that she knows will creak under her weight. She needs some water, and if she’s going to the kitchen it’s really only logical that she grab a Poptart, too. There’s no need for her to lie in bed _starving._

There’s a thin trail of light coming from her parent’s bedroom. The door is ajar. A shadow passes.

“She’s six years old, George.” Helen’s voice carries under the bedroom door and stops Gwen in her tracks. She pulls herself tight against the wall. “You’re never home.”

“I’ll _be_ home.”

“She’ll need her father.”

“We shouldn’t even be having this conversation. We don’t _need_ to have this conversation.” The bedspread rustles as he sits.

There’s a long silence. Gwen’s just about to keep walking when her mother, voice shattered, says, “I need you to promise me you’ll take care of her.”

“Of course. God, yes, of _course.”_

“I don’t want to have this conversation, either,” Helen says. Gwen gets up the nerve to peek through the gap. Her mother settles beside her father on the bed, presses their foreheads together. “But she needs us to.”

George wraps his arms around his wife’s waist. His shoulders jump. Helen combs her fingers through his hair.

“I love you,” He says. “I don’t know what I’ll do without you.”

She hums. “Your best.”

Gwen squints and tries to build something out of the pieces of conversation. She can’t, so she goes back to her mission. Quieter, this time.

_—_

At recess, there’s always a line for the swings. It becomes such a hotspot for arguments that the lunch aids start timing people. They stand at the ready, whistles between their teeth, as children pull themselves up onto the rubber seats.

Wait in line, get on, swing for five minutes, the whistle is blown.

Kids shove their lunch down their throats and get rid of their trash well before recess in the hope of ending up at the front of the rotation.

The mulch under the swings is worn down to dirt. The chains squeak and wobble when you get high enough. The support beams are rusted red. They all convince themselves they can gain enough momentum to complete the circle.

After enough scraped knees and rolled ankles, the school bans jumping off.

It isn’t much fun after that. Gwen misses the airlessness of the free fall, the way her body learns to correct itself just before she gets hurt. The parabola of the downswing.

She takes up wall ball instead.

—

They get deep into the throes of addition in math class just as Gwen gets into the habit of helping Helen sort her medicine.

Every Sunday morning they sit at the kitchen table, the radio playing the top hits as Helen opens all fourteen sections of the pill box. She twists open a bottle, hands it to Gwen, and says, “I need seven.”

Gwen counts deliberately, nests the pills together on her left side, then counts them again.

They make their way through the dragon’s horde of medicine. Some Sundays, Gwen points to a bottle and asks, “What’s this?”

And Helen smiles and stutters through the name on the side of the label, and when Gwen presses, again, “What is that?” 

“It reduces pain.”

Gwen frowns up at her mother and asks, “Are you in pain?”

“Sometimes.”

“Like when you scrape your knee?”

Helen licks her lips, and sighs. “A little more than that.”

Gwen could ask more questions, and she’d get answers. Helen has always taken to speaking to Gwen like an adult.

Gwen isn’t sure, however, that she _wants_ more answers. She counts to seven and moves on.

—

The park is surprisingly empty for a Saturday afternoon. They find an empty stretch of soccer field near a bench so that Helen can sit and watch. Bees buzz around their ankles as they walk, butterflies migrate toward the treeline. They can still hear the rush of traffic from the road, kids yelling on the playground.

Gwen keeps the thin nylon bag tucked under her arm while her father unravels the spool of string.

“You have to hold on really tight,” He explains. He holds his hand out and she gives him the bag. “It’s pretty windy, and if you let go it’ll take the whole spool with it.”

Gwen brushes some hair out of her face and watches her father attach the line to the kite. It’s pink and sparkly, with a blue tail. She’d picked it out herself.

It feels like he takes his time getting it up in the air. He throws it, runs with it, wiggles it, until finally catches the wind. The line unspools itself further, zig-zags across the plastic bunch of string until he tightens his grip and stops it.

“Alright,” George says, once the kite is high above them. “Dig your heels in.”

Gwen does as she’s told. She sinks her shoes into the damp ground and holds her hands out.

She’s not expecting the weight. The kite tugs at her arms.

It eclipses the sun, casts long shadows across the ground.

It takes Gwen too long to realize when it’s gotten too small, that there’s nothing tugging on her arms. By the time she understands the loss, the kite is too far away to retrieve.

“Uh,” She says, “Dad?”

He looks up from the conversation he’s having with Helen and his eyes widen.

There’s something youthful about the way her father chases after the kite. He leaps, arms stretching uselessly into the spring sky. Helen laughs into her hand until she coughs. George comes back empty handed, palms upturned in an apology.

“Sorry, hun,” He tells Gwen, out of breath and sweating. “It’s outta the park.”

—

In her mind, the kite travels forever. It circles the earth in 80 days, like in the book her mother read to her. It loops once, then again. Goes to Europe, and Australia, and Asia. It gets stuck around the Eiffel Tower until a big gust of wind tugs it loose. It travels along the great wall of China. It mourns the ruins of Pompeii.

In reality, it’s tangled in the branches of a tree. Maybe, in the winter, it’ll make it to the ground.

—

Bad things happen to good people, and when Helen Stacy gets too sick to walk, they turn the living room into a bedroom. Wires are threaded on the wall, hooked up to and around machines whose names Gwen trains her mouth to say.

It smells of rot and sanitizer, and Gwen spends a lot of time lingering in the archway that separates the kitchen and the room taken over by Hospice. She drags her feet about it, walking on tiptoes when her mother is asleep and praying she doesn’t wake.

Most of the memories are a blur but she remembers sitting, perched on the edge of the bed, feet dangling.

“What’s on your face?” She asks her mother, pointing at the clear tubing snaking around her ears into her nose.

“It helps me breathe.”

Gwen frowns doubtfully. “How?”

Helen takes the time to explain the inner-workings of the oxygen tank, how the hollow tubes carry air. She holds Gwen’s fingertip over the cannula so she can feel the air blowing against her skin.

“So then what’s that?” She points, next, to the IV, and the blood pressure machine, and the pulse oximeter, and the wires that climb the walls like beige ivy.

“All of this was made to help sick people, like me,” Helen explains after a demonstration of the bed’s range of movement.

Gwen’s fingers pause on the button. “Who makes it?” She asks.

“Hmm… Good question.” Helen reaches up and takes her IV bag off the hook. She turns it over in her palm, runs her finger over the small print of the bag, and then twists it so Gwen can see.

“I don’t know what that says.”

“Well, spell it out. It starts with an O.”

“Oh-scorp?”

Helen’s eyes twinkle. “Mmm, close. What other sound can ‘O’ make?”

“Ooo-scorp?”

Helen’s nose crinkles. Her face is sunken and paled, but her smile is still beautiful. “Ahh,” she says, and Gwen purses her lips.

“Ahh?” She repeats.

“Ahhscorp.”

“What’s _Ahhs_ corp?”

“They’re a company that makes medicine to help sick people.” Helen shifts to put the IV bag back and winces. She tried to cover it up but Gwen, even living in the flowery haze of childhood, notices.

Emboldened, she presses, “So Oscorp’s going to make you better?”

Helen opens her mouth, then closes it. She puts a hand on Gwen’s cheek, strokes her temple with her thumb. Tears pool at the corners of her eyes, but when she blinks they disappear. Like magic. She sniffs and shakes her head.

“No, sweetheart. I’m not going to get better.”

(Gwen struggles with that brutal honesty. Sometimes the truth is so blunt it lands like a blow to the head.)

“So then what’s the point?” Gwen demanded. A lump lodged in her throat.

Helen’s gaze drops to the blanket on her lap. She swallows. “Well, some people who are sick like me _do_ get better. Places that make medicine research these diseases so that they can take what they learn and figure out how to cure other people.”

There’s not much to say. They turn back to The Golden Girls. Helen locks their fingers together.

_—_

Her parents explain it like a balloon. You pump it full of air, watch it float in the corner for days, weeks, maybe even months, until the helium has run low enough that it settles on the ground, dimpled and malleable.

_People die,_ they explain, _and sometimes it’s for no good reason._

—

The funeral is a blur. Gwen spends most of it stagnant, in position beside the open casket, arms tired from hugging people and head aching from crying.

She’s not too young to understand the consequences of death.

It’s bright and sunny, and Gwen sobs her way through the ceremonious lowering of the casket.

_Six feet deep,_ she thinks, and tries to put that into perspective. If the crust of the Earth is 18 miles deep (they’d learned that in class, when they’d learned about earthquakes and tsunamis), then six feet is barely even a dent. It’s shorter, even, than her father.

Her mothers grave is a pothole, really. An inconvenience that disturbs the earth and has to be filled. _And if that’s death,_ Gwen’s young brain reasons, _then what’s life?_

She comes back to school on Monday, and there’s a card sitting on her desk beside a bag of candy. Her classmates had scrawled their named under a carefully-crafted note her teacher had scripted alongside the generic message of condolence.

Gwen pretends she can read it, because she thinks she’s supposed to. The polite thing to do, she reasons, is to act like this single action mends the wounds left by her early brush with the concept of mortality.

She sits in class, listens to them all sing the spelling of _because_ to the tune of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, excuses herself to go to the bathroom, and throws up.

—

A year after Gwen’s mother dies, Italian archeologists unearth skeletons who died with their arms wrapped around each other.

They aren’t separated. Instead they’re displayed together, in an eternal embrace, unforgotten.

Gwen keeps a magazine clipping above her bed, love transcending death.

Six feet doesn’t feel so insignificant anymore.

—

Gwen has her first kiss under a balloon arch. It’s the seventh grade dance, and she hasn’t actually talked to her date all night. They’d greeted each other at the entrance with stilted waves and then avoided each other’s eyes. They skirted on the edge of each other’s friend groups, offered stiff nods whenever their gazes caught each other.

(But they were still each other’s dates— they were because he’d asked her on the way out of the cafeteria. Well, he’d slipped her a note at the trashcans, so wrinkled that she thought he was asking her to toss it in the bin, but she caught sight of his scribbly handwriting just before accidentally delivering the most brutal rejection in middle school history.)

When she sees him approaching, her first instinct is panic. She dumps her half-eaten cupcake into the trashcan, and pats at her lips to make sure there aren’t any crumbs stuck to her lipstick.

He doesn’t ask her to dance, even though a slow song is playing. Instead he says, while wiping his palms on the sides of his pants, “I like your hair.”

(It makes her feel better than it should— she’d spent two hours burning her fingertips and the back of her neck with a curling iron only for the curls to come out loose and fried.)

Gwen brings a hand up to a crusty curl and grins. “Thanks.”

“Should we, uh…” He kicks at the ground and his brand-spanking-new dress shoes squeak. “Should we kiss?”

And Gwen is twelve, and hopped up on hormones, and she’s pretty sure she doesn’t smell bad so she giggles nervously, nods, and leans in.

They are, officially, boyfriend and girlfriend for two weeks before Gwen finds him holding hands with Meghan Hoffman in the choir room.

—

In eighth grade, she’s in the advanced science classes. Biology, environmental science. She gets first place at the science fair by testing antibiotics on bacteria.

She hangs the certificate above her mirror.

—

The first day of high school, the classroom is buzzing with energy. Gwen has a new backpack and a fresh manicure and options for where she’s going to sit at lunch.

She feels grown up, finally. She’s allowed to stop at her locker whenever she wants, and the dress code is far more lax, and she sits straight-backed twirling a new highlighter between her fingers.

She’s staring at a map of the school and trying to figure out how to get to her classes.

The guy sneaks in five seconds after the bell rings.

“Late on the first day?” Her homeroom teacher muses, and he waves at her apologetically.

“I got lost,” He says as he makes his way to an empty seat.

Gwen’s eyes follow him across the classroom. The first thing she notices about him actually _isn’t_ his hair (though the red is rather noticeable), but the way he carries himself. He doesn’t slink, even though slinking would be appropriate. He sits down, straight backed, and immediately turns to talk to the people around him.

Without giving him much more thought, Gwen goes back to planning her route, and she only looks up when her name is called for attendance.

—

He sits next to her in advanced chemistry, one leg sticking out into the aisle between lab tables. His backpack leans against Gwen’s chair and she casually nudges it over until it falls onto his.

He leans back, elbow on the back of his chair, grinning at Gwen. “You’re in my homeroom, right? You must be a freshman, too.”

“You’re the kid who was late, right?”

Up close, his confidence is oozing and his pants are Gucci. She notes, though, that it isn’t quite infuriating. She clocks him beside a lacrosse player, and he’s at least tolerable. And, at the very least, he smells better.

His lips twitch and so do the freckles on his cheeks. “Right on the money,” He tells her. “I’m Harry.”

“Gwen.”

Harry opens his mouth to say something, but he’s cut off by a sharp clap from the front of the classroom. Mrs. Robbins leans against her desk and crosses her arms over her chest.

“I hope you all had a good summer,” she tells them. When Gwen looks hard enough, she realizes that her skirt is adorned with the entire periodic table. “And I also hope you’re all ready to get down to business.”

Gwen opens her notebook, readies a highlighter, and a pen, and a pencil. Harry pulls out a loose sheet of paper and a pencil that looks like it’s been sitting under a locker for the past three months. When he puts it down on the black table, it leaves a dusty imprint.

“Actually, before we start,” Mrs. Robbins says. “Look at the person sitting right next to you.”

Harry grins at her. Gwen offers a tight-lipped smile and a sharp nod.

“Say hello to your lab partner for the year.”

Harry sticks a hand out and she reluctantly shakes it. “Looks like we’re going to be seeing a lot of each other,” He says, and Gwen swallows.

She thinks, _This will go one of two ways._

**Author's Note:**

> If you like this, feel free to come follow and talk to me on Tumblr [@dredfulhapiness](https://dredfulhapiness.tumblr.com)


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